THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: THE NORTH CAROLINA SENATOR; As Edwards's Race Ends, Talk of No. 2 Spot on Ticket

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

March 4, 2004

The lights dimmed in the school gymnasium, the rock song ''Take Me Home'' thumped from speakers, and a multimedia show of images and sounds from the campaign trail played.

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina took the stage and declared, ''Man, it is good to be home'' as he formally announced the suspension of his campaign.

But just off to the side somebody hoisted a ''Kerry-Edwards'' sign, meaning that even here, at home among a few hundred supporters, there would be no respite from such talk.

Mr. Edwards has done little to dampen it.

In a nearly 13-minute address, he did not tip his hand about what he might do next, though he did promise to work to get Senator John Kerry elected. Whether that means as his running mate will be determined later, but his advisers say they doubt he would say no if asked.

''John Kerry has what it takes right here to be president of the United States,'' Mr. Edwards said, pointing to his heart as he spoke in the gymnasium of the high school two of his children attended, including his 16-year-old son, Wade, who was killed in a car accident in 1996.

''I will do everything I have in my power to help him,'' said Mr. Edwards, who spoke to Mr. Kerry after losing all 10 state contests on Tuesday. Details about what role, if any, Mr. Edwards would play in the campaign did not come up, aides said.

Although Mr. Edwards has said that his goal in running was not to seek the vice presidency, Democratic leaders said he could take comfort in coming this far in the race and having secured a spot on the national stage for some time to come.

Tony Coelho, a Democratic strategist who served as former Vice President Al Gore's campaign chairman, said of Mr. Edwards: ''Here is a guy who had no electoral experience except for one Senate seat, had not been on the national scene at all, had not been a major factor in the Senate, was a newcomer from his state and decides to run for president against all odds.''

''Now,'' Mr. Coelho added, ''he ends as sort of the national favorite for vice president.''

In many ways, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 altered the shape of the race and the thinking of the electorate in ways Mr. Edwards could not surmount.

Suddenly, despite all the tutorials in policy to ''put some meat on his bones,'' as one Democratic strategist put it, despite haircuts and ditching his casual clothes and boning up on the crises of the day, Mr. Edwards, 50, could not get past the impression among voters that he seemed slight, too young, not serious enough to be president, Democrats said.

''In dangerous times, experience is a tremendous asset,'' said Bruce Reed, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who has counseled Mr. Edwards and nevertheless praised him for a positive race.

The seeds of Mr. Edwards's campaign were planted well before Sept. 11, 2001, not long after Vice President Al Gore lost the presidential race to George W. Bush. Mr. Edwards, who had been on Mr. Gore's shortlist for vice president, embarked on a series of meetings with party leaders, policy analysts, potential donors, political journalists and others to both gauge and promote his chances.

He had impressed Democrats with his impassioned defense of President Clinton during his impeachment trial in the Senate in 1999. A freshman elected in 1998 after a 20-year career as a trial lawyer who earned millions from medical malpractice and product liability cases, Mr. Edwards sought to buttress his political standing by forming a political action committee called New American Optimists, which gave money and computers to candidates and political organizations in key states like Iowa.

Shortly after the new year in 2003, he announced at his home in Raleigh, N.C., that he would effectively enter the race, and based on conversations with Mr. Reed and other veterans of the Clinton White House whom he met over dinners, Mr. Edwards rolled out a series of policy speeches.

It was an early effort to deal with what his strategists acknowledge was a fundamental problem, the perception that he lacked experience and heft for the presidency.

With robust fund-raising and a buzz fed by positive articles in national magazines, Mr. Edwards was almost instantly thrust toward the front of the pack, talked up by Democrats as a viable challenger to John Kerry or Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont then was considered a long-shot.

But Mr. Edwards stayed off the campaign trail for long periods raising money while Dr. Dean's campaign gathered steam. Mr. Edwards's aides have said they grew anxious by September when it appeared Dr. Dean was not slowing and was drawing much of the media attention.

Mr. Edwards had not yet ruled out running for re-election to his Senate seat, feeding the impression among Democrats that he was not in the race for the long haul. But by mid-September he staged an announcement in his hometown, Robbins, N.C.

As he spoke, however, cellphones and pagers of reporters and aides began buzzing with news that Gen. Wesley K. Clark had decided to enter the race, stepping on Mr. Edwards's announcement and adding to an already crowded field that would hamper fund-raising and media attention from then on out.

As the contest got under way, a few critical obstacles surfaced, some advisers noted, pointing to Mr. Clark's razor-thin third place showing ahead of Mr. Edwards in New Hampshire and his equally close victory in Oklahoma. That allowed Mr. Clark to stay in the race for the next round of primaries in Tennessee and Virginia, where Mr. Edwards finished second.

''Frankly if General Clark would not have been in Oklahoma, we would have won in Tennessee and maybe Virginia,'' said David Axelrod, Mr. Edwards's media adviser. ''You guys would have been writing about a different race. Kerry's inevitability would have been punctured.''

Signs of trouble first surfaced in December. Mr. Edwards was languishing in the polls, fund-raising had slipped, the political and media world were captivated by Dr. Dean, supporters were calling and e-mailing campaign officials urging them to do something.

''It was disquieting,'' Mr. Axelrod said. His team gathered in Washington, where they decided not to join the intensifying fray of attacks among the contenders, but to convey a message with a positive tone that would appear presidential.

By the new year, Mr. Edwards had retooled his stump speech into one crying out against the ''two Americas'' -- for the rich and ''for everybody else.''

''It gave him -- particularly in Iowa -- a way for voters to begin a discussion about him,'' said Joe Lockhart, a Democratic strategist who served as President Clinton's spokesman. ''Without that speech he would not have been as popular and his message would not have been crystallized.''

In Iowa, he surprised the political establishment with a second place, beating Dr. Dean and Mr. Gephardt.

Mr. Edwards landed in New Hampshire on a high, though it was short-lived. He finished fourth, just behind Mr. Clark and then headed to the Feb. 3 South Carolina primary.

The disappointing finish in New Hampshire slowed down the campaign, Democrats said, and it never bounced back from there. He did win South Carolina, but that was written off as a given because he was born there.

''Even though he was able to go on, he needed to break through someplace else,'' said Steve Jarding, a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and a political consultant who had run Mr. Edwards's political action committee.

Mr. Jarding said the death knell began when Mr. Edwards lost Tennessee and Virginia to Mr. Kerry, allowing Mr. Kerry to debunk the notion that he could not win in the South.

A stronger-than-expected second place in the Wisconsin primary was still, in the end, second place.

By the time Mr. Edwards decided to draw sharp differences with the front-runner, Mr. Kerry, in Los Angeles and in New York, it seemed to Democrats to be too late. The voters and representatives of various party constituencies, including unions and African-Americans, had already coalesced behind Mr. Kerry.

That Mr. Edwards kept up his upbeat manner mystified even some of his supporters but Harrison Hickman, his pollster, speculates the tragedy of his son's death may play a role, just as the memory was never far, symbolized by Mr. Edwards' wearing his son's Outward Bound pin everywhere he went. Mr. Hickman recalled an early meeting with Mr. Edwards before he signed on for his 1998 Senate race.